Init 1 Amdt, H.W. 1981, “Economic Development: A Semantic History.” Economic Development and Cultural Change, 39, pp. 457-466, ————____ So commonplace has the concept of “economic development” become to this generation that it comes as surprise to find the Oxford Eng Dictionary still unaware of “development” a ‘echnical term in economics, as contrasted with its use in mathematics, biology, music. ot photography: Nor, incidentally, is there an entry on “economic development” in the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. The story of how the term Lisonomic development” entered the English Language and came, for a time at least to be identified with growth in per capita income is both curious and illuminating Mainstream Economics Adam Smith spoke, not of economic development, but of “the progress of England towards opulence and improvement”, “Material progress” was the expression almost invariably used by mainstream economists from Adan, Smith until World War Il when they referred to what we would now call the economic evelopment of the West during those2 centuries, When Colin Clark in 1940 published hig monumental comparative study of economic cevelopment, he still called it The Coniitions of Economie Progress (the title Marshall had had if mind 4or the fourth volume of his Principles, which he had planned but never wrote), Economists and economichistorians wrote about the tise of capitalism, the industrial revolution, the evolution of trade, or “The Growth of Free Industry and Enterprise”. But this historicel Process appears rarely if ever to have been described as economic development. Asa policy jective, economic development became increasingly prominent during the nineteenth ceatuty, first in Germany and Russia and other Sountries in Europe, later in Japan and China and READING #1.1 elsewhere, in what we now call the “Third World”. But it was generally referred to os {modernization” or “westernization” or not infrequently, “industrialization”. When Alseed Marshall used the word “development”, it w inaliteral sense, denoting merely emergence ov, time, as in “the development of speculation in every form” or “the development of social institutions”. This remained generally true, at least in the British and American literature, wail the 1930s, However there were a few exceptions, One is]. Schumpeter's Theory of Economic Developmen bat this, though published in German in 191] a. Theorie der wirtschaftichen Entwicklung, was ne tanslated into English until 1934. A secon: exception is the use of the term “economic development” by economic historians in the aps Lilian Knowles, reader in economichistory at the London School of Economics, in 1921 Published her book, The Economic Development of the British Overseas Empire, and mentioned in the preface that aunit wit the same ttle had recently been made a compulsory subject for the Bachel of Commerce degree of London Universi ‘Years later, Vera Anstey, also at the Londo: of Economics, followed Knowles with her ‘Te Economic Development of India. Another LSE economic historian, R.H. Tawney, in his book on China written in 1931 spoke ofthe “longs proces, of development” that had occurred in the West and of the “forces which have caused the economic development of China” and referred to the analogy between China's twentieth-centusy economic condition and that in Europe in th middle ages as implying “a comp. of economic development” rison of stages These intriguing exceptions provide the clue to the two quite distinct channels through which the term “economic development” entered Sn usage. Tawney, like Schumpeter ki Ulian Knowles and Vera Anstey were historiane of Empire. aUnit 1 #1.1 — $$ Marxist Origins In one sense, the birthplace of “economic development” in English would seem to be the first English translation of Mary's Capital and the date 1887. The preface to the first German edition contains the famous statement that “it is not a question of the higher or lower degree of development of the social antagonisms that result from the natural laws of capitalist production. It is a question of these laws themselves, of these tendencies working with iron necessity towards inevitable results. The country that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future”, Here, as in the subsequent passage when he referred to “the historical circumstances that prevented, in Germany, the development of the capitalist mode of production, and consequently the development, in that country, of modern bourgeois society”, Marx used the word” development” in the sense in which it forms the key concept of his economic interpretation of history. ‘As Schumpeter put it, in Marx's is schema of thought, “Development was... the central theme. ‘And he concentrated his analytical powers on the task of showing how the economic process, changing itself by virtue of its own inherent logic, incessantly changes the social framework—the whole of society in fact.” As has often been pointed out, Marx derived his concept of development, including the notion of phases or stages of development which unt a dialectic process according to an inexorable law, from Hegel. Hegel, in turn, stood in a long, tradition—from Aristole, with his concept of development as the realization of “potential” matter in “actual” form, to Fichte, who was the first to argue that “history proceeds dialectically”. Some of Hegel’s formulations strike notes strangely familiar to students of recent development literature. "The principle of volves..the existence of a latent ‘a capacity or potentiality striving m of being, to realise itself... The history of the world...is the process of development...(This) development therefore, does not represent the harmless tranquility of mere growth”. But it was Marx who gave development a specifically economic connotation. Marx's notion of stages of economic develop isa constant theme in later Marxist literature, bu itis difficult to find references in this literature to more or less “developed” countries or nations. When tine Second Congress of the Communist International of 1920 reached the important conclusion that, pace Marx, the capitalist stage of economic developmentis not one through which all countries must pass, the distinction drawn was, between “oppressing” and “oppressed” or between “advanced” and “backward” nations: “nal colonies and backward countries...with aid of the proletariat of the most advanced countries the backward countries may pass to the Soviet system and, after passing through a definite stage of development to communism, without passing, through the capitalist stage of developme Colonial Development “Reonomic development” as used by the British historians of Empire of the 1920sis a concept quite different from the Marxist one, with a considerably longer history. What Lilian Knowles set out to write about in her history of the economic development of the British Overseas Empire was “the remarkable economic achievements within the Empire during the past centuties..the hacking down of the forest or the sheep rearing or the gold mining which made Canada, Australia and South Africa into world factors..or the struggle with the overwhelming, forces of nature which took shape in the unromantic guise of ‘Public Works’ in India.” A few years earlier, Lord Milner had warned, in an official memorandum that “it is more than ever necessary that the economic resources of the Empire should be developed to the utmost”, and in 1929 the British Parliament passed a Col Development ActUnit #1.1 Whereas for Marx and Schumpeter, economic pment w develo; sa historical process that happened without being consciously willed by anyone, economic development for Milner and others concerned with colonial policy was an ity, especially though not exclusively, of In Mary’ sense, it is society or an ¢ system that “develops”; in Milner is xse, itisnatural resources that are “developed” ic Development in Mazx’s sense derives wm the intransitive verb, in Milner’s sense from the transitive verb. econon The origins of the transitive concept of economic development which, by the 1920s, was in fairly common use in the specialist British literature of colonia! history and policy are to be found, not in nineteenth-century British (or American) writings about economics and economic history but in ‘Australian (and to a lesser extent, Canadian) writings, and they go a long way back. The directors of the Van Dieman’s Land Company, which held large tracts of land on the Australian mainland, expressed in their thirteenth annual report of 1835 the dominant local opinion about the needs of the young colonies: “Population is, the only thing wanted to develop the Company's locations”. A colonial politician made the same point a few years later, in 1845, in the Legislative Council of New South Wales: "The resources of a new country can only be developed by constant additions to its population”. The case for construction of railways was put in similar terms 1 1954 —""The best and most economical means of developing the vast resources of the interior” — and in 1861 one Charles Mayes in Melbourne published a pamphlet, entitled Essays on the Manufactures More Immediately Required for the Economic Development of the Resources ofthe Colo which the Oxford English Dictionary in its next edition might well list as the earliest (so far) known use of the term “economic development” In Canada, too, as early as 1846, the Canadian Economist argued that Canada is now thrown upon her own resources, and if she wished to prosper, these resources must be developed”. But whereas in Australia the transitive use of “development” was continuous and comm: from the middle of the nineteenth century onward, —side by side with synonyms such as “opening up our natural resources” or “the steady occupancy and proper advancement of the Colony”, —the Canadian example is the so far discovered before the 1880s, and in the United States it does not seem to have been u at all in the nineteenth century iy one ‘That “economic developmen sense entered the language and became common in Australia, while being used muc! Canada and not at all in the United States, is no historical accident. In Jnited Sta and for much of the time also in Canada, econo development happened, as immigrants from Europe streamed in; settlers went west to take fertile land; communists established t sometimes without) legal rules made government. In Australia’s hostile environ where settlers from the earliest convict days had to contend with drought, flood, pests, distance and more drought, economic development did. not happen. It was always seen to need government initiative, action to “develop” the continent's resources by bringing people and capital from overseas, by constructing rai and by making settlement possible through ‘gation and other “developmental” public works. $o well established did t in Australia th: “the doctrine of notion become viewed as a task of gov authority on colonial policy, .S. Furnivall, refe’ to “the development of the material resources of Burma through trade and economic enter and it was probably also in this sense m was used in an International Labour Office stud) rrE————————